Al Seyassah, an independent Kuwaiti newspaper, reported on August 2, “An Iranian diplomat in Paris warned the Lebanese government that extremist Sunni groups linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi will go through with the threats spewed last week to kill nine Shiite leaders in Lebanon.”
[...]The diplomat told Al Seyassah that “the statement released by Al-Qaeda of the Soldiers of Damascus, which is believed to have a cell inside the Palestinian Ain el-Helewieh refugee camp in Lebanon, is probably true. ... Jordanian intelligence officers, who have been following Zarqawi’s movements and statements in Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon as well as other countries, have information about Islamist cells linked to and funded by Zarqawi – which send fighters to Iraq through Syria— in southern and northern Lebanon.”
The Iranian diplomat... advised the Lebanese government to take action and crack down on these organizations and cells, which are located in Palestinian refugee camps in northern and southern Lebanon.
Poor Lebanon. As Michael Young wrote last week, warning of a Middle East "shipwreck":
In fact the Arab world is utterly unprepared for all that lies ahead. It is unprepared to deal with a possible collapse in Iraq - though Arab states like Syria and Saudi Arabia continue to play sorcerer's apprentice there, as do Iran and Turkey. The Arab world is unprepared to deal creatively with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and to take advantage of the Gaza pullout. It is unprepared to deal with alternatives to dictatorship and regime corruption, or to deal with economic development and the myriad other requirements made routine in a world demanding more openness.
In Lebanon, we will acutely feel the repercussions of our surroundings. We will pay a price for breakdown in Iraq, as we will for Assad's efforts to cling to power and to punish us for our independence. We will pay for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' limitations, and for the Palestinians' desire to retain their weapons in Lebanon (didn't Sultan Abu al-Aynain, the Palestinian delegate to the Lebanese, say days ago that disarming the Palestinians meant disarming a "resistance," placing himself in the same trench as Hizbullah?). We will pay the price for Ahmadinejad's victory in Iran. We will pay the price for the compulsive distress of a Middle East that has become a headache to the world, because all it seems to generate with any consistency are angry young men and an uncanny resistance to amelioration.
So praktike, now the tension in Lebanon with the Shi'a has diminished, you and the Shi'a leadership might want to be careful about some of those Sunni camp-dwellers. Sheesh, to put it politely.
Tell me again -- why is "stability" such a dirty word for neocons?
cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism
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